Reparations for some, not others

After Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for his Ponzi scheme, one of his victims was interviewed by a local television reporter while leaving the courtroom. She spoke about how justice was finally served; that he got what he deserved. And, she stated, “It was important that the damage be repaired.”

The damage she was referring to was the loss of the money she had invested in his scheme. The repair was the punishment for his crime and the hope that she would be recuperating some of that money. The crime was stealing and the perpetrator had been punished. At least one amend had been made. The key issues here are loss, greed and theft, crime, damage and reparations.

The judicial system looked out for those individuals who had enough money to invest in his scheme and who demanded justice for their losses. They received swift legal justice to help repair the damage. Those who never have amassed enough money to invest in Wall Street schemes on such a scale, however, get no such recognition of their demands for social or economic justice.

In 2009, millions of descendants of the victims of crimes against humanity perpetrated during the transatlantic slave trade and U.S. slavery still await their justice. They still await restitution for being stolen from their land; for the loss of lives, family, culture, language, even their names; for theft of labor and services; for the loss of income and benefits denied them from their ancestors’ labor; for the hundreds of years of pain and suffering, and for the legacy of slavery and discrimination that continues to inflict harm.

Present-day capitalist rulers, those who have benefited from enslaved Africans’ free labor, continue to hold fast to the practice of oppression, exploitation and placing profit before people. The perpetrators continue to operate with impunity. They give lip service in the form of recent empty “apologies” without true remorse. They show no intent or attempt to make restitution towards eliminating all forms of institutional racism, towards leveling the playing field or towards repairing the resulting damages.

There was no bailout for the enslaved Africans, just as there are no bailouts for the poor, unemployed and marginalized sectors of the working class today. Yet we’ve seen repeated bailouts for greedy Wall Street bankers and investors—all at the taxpayers’ expense. Most of the banks are prospering. AIG is paying out another round of million-dollar bonuses to reward the guilty criminals. Bernie Madoff going to jail was the exception to the rule; what we have seen, in general, is that if you are rich and guilty of defrauding people, you are allowed to still maintain a lavish lifestyle, unregulated.

On June 19 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and racial discrimination. It was timed to coincide with the celebration of Juneteenth, the day commemorating the release from bondage of enslaved Africans in Texas, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. This resolution, however, is a non-binding empty gesture and only symbolic. It contains a disclaimer stating that nothing in it supports or authorizes reparations by the U.S. government.

This resolution is coupled with the seemingly steady erosion of affirmative action programs designed to close racial gaps and disparities and repair the damages rooted in racism. Even the 1965 Voting Rights Act has been challenged and weakened this past June by the U.S. Supreme Court. This court’s ruling allowed more state and local jurisdictions to change their election procedures and lessen federal oversight. It can have the effect of weakening the right to political representation for Black and other oppressed people.